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Thus far, I have observed three significant issues with both the current Beta and release versions of Affinity Photo.

They include the following:

1.The Macro has very limited capabilities. Kind of useless except for the most mundane actions. We hope to add more comprehensive macro capabilities in the future. For now, if there is anything specific you would really like to see, it's worth mentioning it in the Feature Request section of the forum.

2.When an image is opened, it appears as a docked image and the frame around it is not collapsed around the image. This is a big pain and time consuming if you want to display multiple images. If you only open a single image, you cannot undock it unless you are in Separated Mode.

3.A variety of settings that should remain set by the user revert to the factory settings. For example. Pixels vs. Inches, Refine settings, and many more. More lost time. 1.7 has started to address some of these settings and we have started making some of them 'sticky'. Possibly not relevant to you, but we have made some settings in the Crop Tool sticky. As time goes on, I'm sure we will add to this.

Affinity Photo appears to be a product advertised as a replacement for PS. While it has many great features, it lacks several basic functions that I suspect go way beyond my little list. We have never claimed to be a replacement for PS.

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Affinity Photo appears to be a product advertised as a replacement for PS. While it has many great features, it lacks several basic functions that I suspect go way beyond my little list.We have never claimed to be a replacement for PS.

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That's a link to a Wikipedia article that anyone can edit. Upon checking the article edit history, I don't recognise any of those users so I would still argue we (Serif) have never stated we are a replacement. The article even says alternative. Maybe by 'alternative' it's implying a one-time license fee vs subscription billing

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In all fairness to Serif, third party reviews and Wikipedia entries can hardly be described as their advertising.

Affinity Photo is certainly an alternative to Photoshop (just as Gimp, PS Elements and PhotoPlus are.)

Whether or not it can be described as a replacement really depends on what you need in a piece of photo editing software. For myself I can do virtually everything in Affinity Photo that I used to do in Photoshop. (But not necessarily in exactly the same way.)

At the risk of being rude to anyone, if you expect a new piece of software like AP to have all the bells and whistles (plus all the baggage!) of a long established one like Photoshop, at a fraction of the price, then you're living on another planet!!!

(And I would doubt if most Photoshop users ever actually use (or even know about) all of the "bells and whistles" anyway!)

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In all fairness to Serif, third party reviews and Wikipedia entries can hardly be described as their advertising.

With respect to Wikipedia, I agree.

However, when Serif's Affinity Facebook account posts links to reviews that talk about Affinity being an Adobe replacement, it starts to become their advertising. They had a choice of posting the link, or not posting it, if it's saying something they disagree with.

Or, they could post the link but comment to clarify that Serif doesn't think of Affinity as being an Adobe replacement.

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However, when Serif's Affinity Facebook account posts links to reviews that talk about Affinity being an Adobe replacement, it starts to become their advertising. They had a choice of posting the link, or not posting it, if it's saying something they disagree with.

Or, they could post the link but comment to clarify that Serif doesn't think of Affinity as being an Adobe replacement﻿.

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For the reason I explained. If Serif posts a link to a review that is Serif advertising their product. If that review calls them an Adobe replacement then if they do not say something different they are implicitly agreeing. If they don't agree they should say so, or not post that link.

For example, the Facebook post shown above, where the linked article starts out with a headline saying that if you want Photoshop without Adobe subscription plan, consider Affinity.

That statement is the very first thing the reader sees under the Affinity logo indicating who said it.

It's confusing, and possibly misleading if that's not what Affinity believes

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But that's the opinion of someone at techradar.
I think if someone has an opinion about a product and sees it as a true competitor you may be proud.
Why should one devaluate oneself and be modest if that means people would think less of you.
That's competing!
Not claiming to be the same.

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Of course it is. But if you repeat that opinion, without a disclaimer, you have now "owned" that opinion for the purpose of advertising. If you don't want to own that opinion, don't use it in your advertising.

(It would be less of a case of advertising, or less of Serif espousing that opinion, if that FB post had managed to find a way to omit that headline. Linking to a review, which deep down inside it said that they were a Photoshop replacement, would seem much less like Serif claiming that, than linking to one which used it as their headline.)

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At the﻿﻿ risk of being rude to anyone, if you expect a new piece﻿ of software like AP to have all the bells and whistles (plus all the baggage!) of a long established one like Photosh﻿op, at a fraction of the price, then you're living on another planet!!! ﻿﻿

This is not a valid argument as the chosen price point was entirely up to Serif.
I would pay as much for the Affinity Suite as I paid for the small Adobe Design Standard Suite (even without getting Acrobat), if it offered equal value. My sole reason for looking into alternatives for Adobe apps - which I enjoy using - is that I find renting content creation software unacceptable.

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On the previously discussed issue, whether Affinity Photo is actively marketed as a replacement for Photoshop, just one more observation: I have to admit that I did not book Youtube ads yet – but I did so in a variety of other social channels. Here one can usually narrow down very closely the desired audience and also bid for relevant search keywords.

As a Youtube user and as a person who still uses Photoshop for all his image-editing I search pretty regularly for terms like 'Photoshop + problem I want to solve'. I can not recall searching for Affinity videos. Interestingly I'm getting lots of Youtube ads for Affinity-Photo shown. This, judging from my background in other ad channels should only happen, when one actively bids for the the search-term 'Photoshop'. So, while one might avoid some explicid wording, I think it's fair to say that Serifs marketing department quite aggressively targets Photoshop-users. They were idiots if they didn't :o)